Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This is yet another motion brought in by a Labor member pretending as though everything good that is in the nation has happened since May 2022. If they spruik something often enough and loud enough, eventually, I reckon they're going to start to believe their own talking points. I reckon they're going to start to believe that everything prior to May 2022 was bad and that they are responsible for the sun coming up every morning.

The problem with this motion is that this is the government which almost sent our pharmacists broke and which almost sent our country chemists, in particular, to the wall. We all remember—I know the member for New England and the member for Flynn well remember—when our white-coated warriors were in the public galleries. They were outraged because the pharmacy agreement had not been signed. It took those members and the Nationals, in a coalition opposition, to bring the government to heel, to bring the government to account, to actually get an accord signed and to get a better deal for our country chemists. Hundreds of country chemists are the only frontline people in those rural communities, in those regional communities and, particularly, in those remote areas of Australia that, but for the chemist, would not have a frontline professional looking after their health needs.

We so often hear those opposite talking about bulk-billing, yet bulk-billing rates have dropped 10 per cent under this Labor government. I speak on my shadow portfolio role here, but I well remember, during COVID, what the former member for Flinders, as the Minister and Aged Care, did to make sure that vaccinations went into the Pacific. Furthermore, during that time, over 94 million telehealth consultations were made through Medicare to 16 million patients. There have been 857 new medicine listings on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme since 2019. That is delivery. That is action. That was done by a coalition government.

Labor, don't you come in here and pretend as though all is new and you're the only ones who are doing anything about medicine. In fact, the truth is, and if your talking points reflected the reality, it's quite the opposite. Labor are failing on the medical front. Labor are failing when it comes to rural communities and their health needs. You only have to look at their 60-day dispensing changes—changes which were very much going to send a lot of country chemists to the wall, and it was the Pharmacy Guild and the National Party, in coalition, who belled the cat on this very ill-thought-out policy.

Indeed, we all want cheaper medicines, but, if it comes at the cost of the only health professional in town, the good old country chemist, that friendly health professional who provides the only form of upfront health care for many of those rural communities, then that doesn't improve regional health outcomes. That policy would have sent many rural community chemists bankrupt. Look at what we did during the pandemic, where, according to the Johns Hopkins centre, we were ranked second in the world for pandemic preparedness, and much of that was in the area of health. That was because of the policies of the former coalition government, a coalition government now maligned by those opposite.

We always hear them talking about a trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt. I'll remind those opposite, the Liberals are in a coalition with the Nationals. What did we get for the money we spent? We saved tens of thousands of peoples' lives. We saved millions of jobs. During the pandemic, 1.1 million jobs were created and, if not for that assistance that we provided, those jobs would have been lost. We would have seen unemployment queues. We would have seen queues at the Salvos and at St Vinnies longer than we saw during the Great Depression era.

When Labor comes in with these motions, talking about the PBS and talking about what they've done, they forget about what was done during those years that we were in government. They forget about the life-saving drugs that were put on the PBS for cystic fibrosis, cancer and leukaemia. They forget about all those people, particularly those throughout our regional communities, who have to travel further for medical treatment. 'When in pain, catch the plane' is often the case. They should reflect on that and they should make sure we have better regional health outcomes.

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